FOOTSCRAY Community Legal Centre will call on Maribyrnong City Council to ban door-to- door salespeople after it was found that African migrants were signing contracts they didn’t understand.

FCLC manager Denis Nelthorpe will appeal to the council at its Community Access and Strategic Planning meeting in May to ban the practice in the municipality – or at the very least, ask retailers to leave the area alone.

“If a council, any council, was to take the step of saying ‘we want to ban this or we want to at least ask these retailers to stay out of our area’, my guess is every second council in Australia might well decide to follow suit,” Mr Nelthorpe said.

Mr Nelthorpe has already had preliminary discussions with Community Planning and Advocacy manager Nick Matteo.

The call comes after the FCLC released a report last week accusing energy companies like AGL, Origin, TRU Energy, Victoria Electricity and Red Energy of targeting vulnerable people from non-English speaking backgrounds.

When Star contacted Mayor Michael Clarke last week, he said the council would take a hard line at any retailers trying to take advantage of non-English speaking residents.

“If there’s been predatory salesmanship on behalf of these door-to-door salespeople, I’m going to be calling on my CEO to develop a briefing for all councillors as a matter of urgency so we’re appraised of the situation in detail and council can make a considered decision as to the best way forward.”

Cr Clarke said it was hard enough for people who could speak English to understand the intricacies of energy contracts, let alone those who were new to the country.

“It does sound like gobbledegook once they start spruiking, doesn’t it?” he said.

Mr Nelthorpe met with energy retailers last week to discuss the problem.

“There was a broad recognition that there needs to be a lot more work done between the energy retailers and the settlement agencies that deal with refugees and newly arrived migrants,” he said.

Representatives from both AGL and Origin Energy have denied targeting non-English speaking clients.

Anyone interested in getting Do Not Knock stickers should call the Consumer Action Law Centre on 9670 5088.